Reach for Justice, Touch Lives

Defenseless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them of Eros and dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair Show an affirming flame. From "September 1, 1939" by W.H. Auden Pronouns The Lord said, "Say "We"; But I shook my head, Hid my hands tight behind my back and said, Stubbornly, "I." The Lord said, "Say, We"; But I looked upon them, grimy and all awry, Myself in those twisted shapes? Ah, no! Distastefully I turned my head away, Persisting, "They." Ê Ê The Lord said, "Say We"; And I, At last, Richer by a hoard Of years And tears, Looked into their eyes and found the heavy word That bent my neck and bowed my head; Like a shamed school-boy I mumbled low, "We, Lord." Karle Wilson Bake

Dr. Philip E. Humbert, a psychologist tells the story of a highway closure because of an accident. He was part of the traffic that came to a dead stop and stayed at a dead stop for quite some time. He observed some people listening to radios, a few others tossing a Frisbee, yet others working or reading, and a few opting for a quick nap. Most of these people seemed, if not happy, at least accepting of the situation. Others paced about, swearing and upset; their response to a situation no one could control was to be very unaccepting and very unhappy.

Dr. Humbert, in telling this story, quotes Abraham Lincoln, "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." Those who tossed a Frisbee or napped in this situation chose to be happy and those who paced and cursed chose to be unhappy.

Dr. Humbert's prescription for how to increase happiness in your life includes watching and reading less news. He describes himself as a recovering news addict, and admits it's not easy to watch and read less when the "stock market fluctuates, politicians politic, and sports teams compete."

There is a part of me that agrees wholeheartedly. Watching and reading the news is stressful. Stories of violence, images of suffering, and reports of economic fluctuations combine to make us feel dis-empowered. The world is an awful place, and there is nothing we can do about it. My recommendation, however, is to pick your news sources and to find ways to empower yourselves to make a difference in the world.

If I were to have declared a news blackout at my home this week I would have missed a page three article in the News-Journal on Tuesday that described the Dalai Lama's global thumb-print petition, called "Make Your Mark." Speaking in Atlanta he called for an end to "'global militarization'," including the elimination of nuclear and conventional weapons and chemical warfare and the end of the international arms trade.

We all think we know what the response to the Dalai Lama's call will be - a big zero. In fact, in the days following his call his adopted country, India detonated three nuclear bombs in tests. When nuclear powers respond this way it is hard to imagine any sort of positive response, even in tiny increments. We are so used to the stress of living in a world where total annihilation is not only possible but probable, if not by weapons then by degeneration of the environment, that we do not even heed the Tibetan holy man's call.

We feel defenseless. We are in a stupor. Beleaguered as we are by negation and despair we can only say "I" and "They." Our eyes cannot see the ironic points of light that signal "We." Composed though we are of Eros and dust, we cannot see flickering flames of Just exchanges.

How, then, are we to heed the Dalai Lama's call? How can we awake from our daze?

My answer this Sunday is to reach for justice and touch lives. These words are this year's theme of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee's membership campaign.

What does it mean to serve? Once upon a time, when I lived in Washington state I had a personalized license plate. The word I chose was "process," to honor the process theology concept that God is process - rather than an entity. However, I found out that many people thought I was a process server! Which leads me to tell you that there are many definitions for the verb to serve, among them the process a public servant uses to deliver court papers, particularly unwanted court papers to unwilling participants in litigation.

The concept of serve that interests me the most this morning comes out of our Judaic Christian roots. The first comes from the Hebrew word "abad" [aw-bad], as it is used in the Psalms: "Serve the Lord with gladness: come before God's presence with singing." "Abad" means work of any kind. To serve one must do something.

Another concept comes from the Greek word "douleuo" [dool-yoo'-o], as it is used in the gospel of Matthew: "No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else she will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." In this case the word means to be in relationship to or work for.

The Hebrew word emphasizes action. The Greek word emphasizes relationship.

To serve, then, means to develop a relationship in which work is done, with the person doing the serving meeting the needs of the person being served - hence the concept of a servant.

Yet, service work meets the needs of both the person being served and the one doing the serving. Both become servants to the other.

"How does that happen?" you ask. "How are the needs of the person doing the serving met?"

The answer lies in the relationship that is established. The person doing the serving can set up the relationship so that she or he remains in a subservient position - that means literally, "under-served." But, if the person doing the serving allows for mutuality, he or she is served as well. His humanity is deepened. Her awareness is broadened. His spirit is lifted. Her sense of what is important is clarified. He becomes part of "we."

Service provides mutual enrichment. By our service work we are made whole. By our service relationships we are healed.

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee began in the early years of World War II. Two people, the Rev. Waitstill Sharp and his wife, Martha, helped refugees escape Nazi persecution in Czechoslovakia. Hitler's death machine stopped them after they had helped 27 children and 10 adults out of Europe. I am sure their dreams were bigger. I am sure they hoped to rescue many more people from the ovens. Yet their task was simply to serve. They had no quota; no cost-benefit analysis. Thirty-seven people rescued were 37 people rescued. This was the beginning of the Unitarian Service Committee, which was to become the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

Through the rest of the war the Service Committee joined other organizations in providing refugee assistance. After the war the Committee sent medical missions to Poland and Czechoslovakia and clothing and food to the Netherlands. It served migrant workers in Texas and the Navajos in New Mexico.

Over the years, UUSC developed other programs abroad in Korea, Cambodia, Austria, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines, and Jamaica. In the United States, UUSC worked in Washington, DC, Atlanta, Georgia and Jacksonville, Florida. The UUSC provided nursing training in Turkey, maternal and child welfare in Haiti; advocacy with the Psasmaquoddy Indians in Maine; literacy skills in El Salvador; a Congressional fact-finding mission to El Salvador. Bill Richardson, then U.S. Representative, now ambassador to the United Nations, went to El Salvador under UUSC auspices. More recently, UUSC programs supported human rights efforts in Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Jamaica, and Los Angeles. And so it goes.

I remember one very controversial program the UUSC helped to sponsor in the United States - the National Moratorium on Prison Construction. This was almost 20 years ago. Those monitoring the criminal justice system could see that our judicial process depended on warehousing prisoners. Their reasoning was that if a moratorium on prison construction were declared, more humane and effective methods of correction might develop. I wore my National Moratorium on Prison Construction T-shirt proudly and often, and voted against a new King County Jail, although I worked in the building where the old jail was housed and knew first hand how overcrowded it was. The moratorium failed, but my service on behalf of the moratorium deepened my awareness of the systemic problems in our criminal justice process.

I was served because my understanding was broadened and deepened. I was served because I learned to vote my own conscience rather than follow popular sentiment. I was served because I met and talked with many people who had no idea of why anyone might suggest a National Moratorium on Prison Construction.

"What's the UUSC doing right now?" you ask. Let me describe four programs - one in Mexico, one in Burma, and two in the United States.

The UUSC has long been a believer the adage "Give a person a fish; feed his hunger for a day. Teach a person to fish; feed his hunger for a lifetime."

Chiapas, Mexico, you will recall, was the site of a massacre in late 1997. Three hundred people were killed and 7,000 people displaced. The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee provides financial support to several human rights and women's empowerment organizations that work to promote human rights and democracy in Mexico. The goal is to support the nearly one hundred municipalities in Chiapas that are ruled by traditional authorities in their struggle for autonomy and economic strength as indigenous people. These rights are guaranteed by international treaty. UUSC partners in Mexico are preparing documents and videos to support their testimony of treaty violations before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the European Parliament.

If you contact your U.S. senators and representative urging strong measures by the U.S. State Department to pressure Mexican President Zedillo to respect human rights and fulfill the commitment he made to end violence and to negotiate an end to the conflict in southern Mexico you serve the needs of indigenous Mexican people. You encourage a climate in which free peoples everywhere may relate to each other in strength. Having worked to strengthen the relationship between an elected official and his public you strengthen your relationship with all of humanity. When you empower indigenous people in Mexico, you show an affirming flame, convert your "I" and "they" to "we."

Approximately 110,000 Burmese refugees are living on Thai soil because of human rights violations in Burma, including forced relocations, burned villages, raped women, and tortured men. The UUSC funded a week-long human rights training program for members of the Burmese Women's Union and women from Burmese ethnic groups in December 1997. The training covered a comprehensive list of topics ranging from local human rights monitoring to lobbying international bodies and international human rights conventions. The women were also trained to organize locally and take part in the decision-making processes of their communities. Participants told the UUSC program associate for Asia, Shalini Nataraj that the training was very useful and gave them confidence to deal with their immediate problems in more effective ways.

If you support negotiations between the pro-democracy forces, led by Aung San Suu Kyi (a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate) and Burma's State Peace and Development Council and Burmese ethnic groups, your advocacy for peace and democracy in Burma will serve you as well as the displaced Burmese. Your action will put you in solidarity with those involved in the UUSC's grass roots efforts. Your support of Burmese refugees shows an affirming flame, converts your "I" and "they" to "we."

One of the UUSC projects in the United States is the Workcamps project. It offers volunteers hands-on opportunities to rebuild a church, collect evidence of environmental pollution in an inner city, explore conditions and issues affecting migrant workers along the US/Mexican border, harvest and transport firewood, and renovate housing. Workcamps projects are located all over the United States.

The church that is being rebuilt is located in Summerton, South Carolina. The Prayer House Mission, a rural, nondenominational church was destroyed by fire in June last year. It is in an area known for heavy Ku Klux Klan activity and the area has the largest concentration of burned black churches in the U.S. The Summerton church fire was the second major disaster for the small Pentecostal church built in 1980. It had also been destroyed in 1989.

The inner city pollution program is in Oakland, California. The environmental justice program places UUSC volunteers with PUEBLO, People United for a Better Oakland, a UUSC partner organization. The workcampers learn first hand about "environmental racism" and how to advocate before city officials and state legislators for changes in public policy.

Texas is the site of the third Workcamp program. It focuses on immigration issues, and teaches volunteers how to advocate for human rights in a manner that advances the civil and political rights of immigrants and the migrant worker community. Volunteers work in the border area between Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico.

The fourth program will take place on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota this summer. While the first group harvests and transports firewood, the second group will renovate substandard housing, conduct a children's craft workshop and work with community members to resolve problems with local, state and federal officials.

By supporting the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee's Workcamps Program you show an affirming flame, convert your "I" and "they" to "we."

The final UUSC program I'll describe this morning is a continuation of the Service Committee's long-term commitment to children and welfare reform. Findings of the Welfare and Human Rights Monitoring Project, the current program, has produced nearly 600 personal testimonies which reveal legal and regulatory requirements that imperil the security of welfare recipients. Families are losing child care, health care, education, housing and adequate food all in the name of reform. Seventy percent, or 7 million, of the nation's 10 million welfare recipients are children. The Service Committee's monitoring and advocacy efforts mitigate the harsh lessons and unfair punishment these children are enduring simply because they live in families which are poor. The reports are used to educate lawmakers, congregations, voters and the media to promote public policies that reduce childhood poverty. When you support the Welfare and Human Rights Monitoring Project, you show an affirming flame, convert your "I" and "they" to "we."

Now I want to tell you why I belong to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. The Committee is totally self supporting. It receives no government grants. It receives no funding from the Unitarian Universalist Association. It depends on private support - yours and mine. I am proud of our emphasis on empowering others. I am pleased that Unitarian Universalist adults and youth have the opportunity to work shoulder-to-shoulder with rich and poor, with white, Black, Native American and Mexican. I am grateful for the action alerts I receive both at home and at church when unusual circumstances call for timely action.

We received an alert just recently. It reads:

Tornadoes have devastated communities in Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Minnesota and elsewhere. Thousands have lost homes and over 100 people have been killed. UU congregations are providing direct assistance and aiding low-income community groups. Please take a special collection for UUSC Disaster Response so UU congregations can continue supporting disaster victims. Thanks to generous UU support, UUSC assisted our Grand Forks congregation response to flooding in the Dakotas. UUSC gave over $40,000 in disaster assistance grants in Grand Forks and on the Standing Rock Reservation.

In a few minutes we will take a second collection. You may wonder at our asking you for money to support the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee in the same month you are making your pledges to support our church. Our hope is that you will be able to contribute something beyond your fiscal year 1999 pledge to Community Church to support this humanitarian work. When the basket comes around you have four options. (1) Contribute nothing - either because enough is enough or because you are going to take the material in your order of service home and read it over before making your contribution. (2) Contribute something for the UUSC Disaster Response. If you choose this option, put your contribution in the basket directly, not in the envelope. (3) Write a check to become a UUSC member and put it in the envelope enclosed in your order of service. If you choose this option, a contribution of $60 or more will be matched dollar for dollar by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock. By giving $60 you generate a $120 gift to the UUSC. (4) Your fourth option is to contribute a loose bill or check to the Disaster Response AND a check in the envelope for a UUSC membership.

By joining the UUSC we reach for justice and touch lives - including our own, which is enlivened, deepened, and inspired by the work of our gifts. When we have finished taking our second collection we will sing hymn 118, "This Little Light of Mine."